Alcibiades in a typically bold gesture, reportedly leads the procession to the Eleusinian festival by road in spite of the danger from the Spartan force at Decelea, thus atoning for, or giving the lie to, his alleged impiety in 415 BCE when he was held to have joined in profaning the Sacred Mysteries.

His subordinate Antiochus, however, is responsible for a naval defeat by Lysander off Notium in 406 BCE Alcibiades had left his squadron at Ephesus); this effectively ends Alcibiades' career.

His political enemies persuade the people to reject him, and he retires to a castle in Thrace.

Its fleet blockaded at Mytilene, Athens raises a totally new fleet to defeat the Spartans at the islands of Arginusae off the west coast of Asia Minor in August 406 BCE.

Conon, admiral in each of the three years 407-405 BCE, is rescued following the Athenian victory.

Theramenes, as captain of a ship, takes part in the victory; returning to Athens after the battle, he leads agitation against the eight generals who had commanded in the engagement; the six who returned to Athens are condemned for negligence in not having picked up survivors from the ships disabled in the battle and are executed in an illegal mass trial.

The demagogue Cleophon again rejects a Spartan offer of peace.

Archelaus has gone on to institute many internal reforms.

He has issued an abundance of good quality coinage.

He has built strongholds, cut straight roads (important for movement of the military), and improved the organization of the military, particularly the cavalry and hoplite infantry.

Euripides, who maintains friendships with the philosophers Anaxagoras and Socrates and with Sophists such as Protagoras and Prodicus, and whose plays reflect his contemporaries’ ethics, rhetoric, and science, may have been prosecuted for impiety by the demagogue Cleon.

His contemporaries associate him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism, both of them being frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes.

Whereas Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence, Euripides chooses a voluntary exile in old age.

Euripides had left Athens shortly after 408 for the “rustic court “of Archelaus, king of Macedon, and here creates one of his greatest tragic plays, The Bacchae.

He dies in here in 406.

Recent scholarship casts doubt on ancient biographies of Euripides.

For example, it is possible that he never visited Macedon at all, or, if he did, he might have been drawn there by King Archelaus with incentives that were also offered to other artists.

Seven troubled years have followed the Athenian surrender in 413.

For most of this period, there has been war with Carthage and internal convulsions that Carthage constantly seeks to exploit.

Hermocrates had plundered Carthaginian possessions in Sicily from Selinus after 408 BCE, and in response Carthage sends an army to Sicily under Hannibal Mago and Himilco II of the Magonid family, which faces a coalition of Sicilian Greeks under the leadership of Syracuse.

The Syracusans elect one Dionysius, who had begun his working life as a clerk in a public office, as supreme military commander in 406 BCE because of his achievements in the war against Carthage that had begun in 409 BCE.

Athenian influence has been strong among the Bosporus cities after the second half of the fifth century; Athens controls local trade until 404 BCE and will remain the chief customer of the Bosporus' food and other exports throughout the fourth century.

Satyrus I (r. 433 BC - 389 BCE) and the other Spartocid rulers of the Bosporus kingdom had been honored by awards of Athenian citizenship because they had promised to provide Athens with wheat, as their predecessor Leucon had done before them in the mid-fifth century.

These rulers (as inscriptions show) call themselves archon when dealing with their Greek subjects but king when describing their authority over the native population.

Scandinavia’s Late Bronze Age civilizations had soon succumbed to tribal warriors newly equipped with long iron swords.

Some Scandinavian peoples around 400 learn the technique of working iron, facilitating a rapid growth of population and clearing of land with iron tools.

Celts settle Styria, a mountainous, mostly forested province in southeastern Austria, bordering on Slovenia in the south, around 400; they are probably drawn by the area’s rich deposits of iron ore.

The Middle East: 405–394 BCE

The Expedition of Cyrus the Younger and Cultural Shifts in the Near East

During this era, Cyrus the Younger, brother of the Persian king Artaxerxes II, attempts to seize the Persian throne. In 401 BCE, Cyrus assembles a substantial mercenary force, prominently featuring Greek soldiers known as the Ten Thousand, and marches into the heart of Mesopotamia. At the Battle of Cunaxa, Cyrus is killed, leaving his Greek mercenaries stranded deep within hostile territory. Their arduous return journey to Greece, vividly documented by the Athenian general and writer Xenophon in his seminal work, the Anabasis, highlights the growing complexities of Greek-Persian interactions and the inherent vulnerabilities of Persian imperial governance.

Culturally, this period marks the end of certain longstanding traditions. Around 400 BCE, the East Semitic Akkadian language, a cornerstone of Mesopotamian civilization for approximately twenty-six centuries, gradually falls into disuse, mirroring the concurrent decline of Biblical Hebrew as a vernacular language. Reflecting continued Babylonian scholarly achievements, astronomers refine their calendrical computations, meticulously synchronizing lunar and solar cycles, and precisely determining the visibility of the new crescent moon—a standard now defining the start of their months.

In Cyprus, Evagoras, ruler of Salamis, continues to promote Hellenic culture vigorously. Recognized by Athens as a champion of Greek values, Evagoras receives Athenian citizenship and maintains constructive diplomatic ties with Persia. His influential role further demonstrates the fluid nature of alliances and cultural exchanges between Greek city-states and the Persian empire, underscoring the shifting political landscape of the period.

Simultaneously, within the Judahite community, a significant intellectual and spiritual movement emerges. Jewish scholars intensify their study of the biblical Torah around 400 BCE, seeking to adapt its principles to contemporary circumstances and integrating oral traditions into a coherent body of teachings, known as the Oral Torah. The influential figure Ezra the Scribe compiles the written Torah in Babylon, subsequently leading a substantial caravan to Jerusalem in 397 BCE under official Persian authorization. Ezra, appointed by the Persian court to regulate religious and social matters among the Judahites west of the Euphrates, reinforces stricter observance of the Law, dissolves intermarriages with non-Jews, and initiates reforms aiming at religious purity and communal identity.

In this period, the Hebrew canon continues to evolve, with texts such as the Book of Ezra taking shape, articulating clear religious and moral directives that become foundational for later Judaism. Similarly, the enigmatic Book of Joel, possibly composed between 400 and 350 BCE, emerges with powerful poetic descriptions of divine judgment and redemption, contributing further to the rich prophetic tradition characterizing this formative era of Jewish history.

This era thus witnesses critical military, linguistic, scholarly, and religious transitions, profoundly reshaping the cultural and geopolitical contours of the Middle East.

Cyrus the Younger, in an attempt to wrest the throne of the Persian Empire from his brother, Artaxerxes II, musters a group of mercenary units, mainly Greek, known as The Ten Thousand.

Their march to the Battle of Cunaxa and back to Greece (401 BCE-399 BCE) is recorded by Xenophon (one of its leaders) in his work, The Anabasis.

The East Semitic Akkadian language, after a twenty-six-hundred-year run in Mesopotamia, falls into disuse in about 400 BCE, as does the Biblical Hebrew language.